Warner Film Noir Collections

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#51 Post by **Jeff** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 2:28 pm

Not only did The Digital Bits mention Lady In the Lake in their news item, Robert Harris mentioned it in his piece there as well. They must have had some reason for suspecting its inclusion. I suspect that Warner originally intended to include Lady, but pulled it from the lineup for some reason. Perhaps they are putting together a Chandler box with The Falcon Takes Over, Murder My Sweet, Lady in the Lake, Marlowe, and (fingers crossed) a two-disc edition of The Big Sleep.

J · #52 Post by J » Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:54 pm

We got cover art ---

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=56595

Harold Gervais · #53 Post by **Harold Gervais** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:35 pm

Bearing in mind I'm not one to gush over artwork for DVDs but Point Blank sure looks good!

devlinnn · #54 Post by **devlinnn** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:16 am

Robert Mitchum would have made a terrific Quentin Crisp, judging by the Crossfire cover.

viciousliar · #55 Post by **viciousliar** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:48 am

I feel that the underrated Act of Violence would have been a better choice for a Robert Ryan noir, it certainly bests Crossfire's tacked-on PC ending, and is thus closer to the true noir spirit. (You really can't deny that, flixyflox

). - But then again, Crossfire was a *big* movie; Oscar-nominated for best picture(along with nominations in other categories) - as was the case for The Asphalt Jungle, too. I guess WB had this in mind when they decided upon the inclusion of this title.
I agree that Dillinger clearly belongs to the gangster movie genre, and it was released as part of The Gangster Collection series issued by CBS/Fox on VHS in the early '90s in the US. Gun Crazy appeared in the same series, incidentally.

alandau · #56 Post by **alandau** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 6:13 pm

flixyflox wrote:

For one thing the substitution of anti-semitism for the homosexuality of the murdered character in Richard Brooks'original novel was obviously to keep the Production Code at bay

There is no doubt that Crossfire is a stagey overrated film, no matter what they substituted for the taboo homosexual aspect of the novel. I will always find it stagey and definitely not a prototypical noir.

alandau · #57 Post by **alandau** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:09 pm

I guess if everyone had the same taste it would be a boring world. I think Murder, My Sweet is an excellent example of film noir. Every frame just exudes what a noir film should be. I much prefer Powell's Marlowe to Bogie's. Don't get me wrong, I love Bogie, I just think that he is too suave, cool and sophisticated for a contemporary Marlowe. Powell's interpretation is of a more alienated character, something contemporary audiences seem to associate with male noir protagonists.

I think the dream/hallucinatory sequence in the movie is very well done.

alandau · #58 Post by **alandau** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:27 am

Flixyflox, very well said. I too have a soft spot for CRISS CROSS. The transfer on the Universal DVD is excellent. I have now seen the movie three times, and discover more after each viewing. This is one movie with alot of depth. This film is just as good (or even better) than Siodmak's previous noir The Killers.

I agree with you that labelling a film noir is a very fluid process. Some movies seem to blend noir/detective/whodunit like Laura (with more of an emphasis on the latter two), others noir/soap/tragedy like Leave Her to Heaven, noir/western etc.

IMO the perfect example of 40's noir (and it is decade-specific, the late 40's, early 50's noirs have a McCarthyist subtext) is DOUBLE INDEMNITY, and in the 50's nothing surpasses THE BIG COMBO
I have the Image DVD of The Big Combo, and I do agree that a restoration is way overdue.

Derek Estes · #59 Post by **Derek Estes** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:30 am

alandau wrote:Flixyflox, very well sais. I too have a soft spot for CROSSFIRE. The transfer on the Universal DVD is excellent. I have now seen the movie three times, and discover more after each viewing. this is one movie with alot of subtext. This film is just as good (or even better) than Siodmak's previous noir The Killers.

I'm sure you are thinking of Criss Cross, not Crossfire

viciousliar · #60 Post by **viciousliar** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:07 am

Oh yes, I lOVE the rather obscure House by the River (photographed in such visual splendor that it belies its shoestring budget), but unfortunately all the prints I have seen have been severely battered, and I fear that there's not a cat's chance in hell that it'll ever appear on a decent-looking DVD. I would assume it descended to public domain hell ages ago. Please, could anybody here prove me wrong?

porquenegar · #61 Post by **porquenegar** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:17 pm

All the films were new to me except Asphalt Jungle. I personally rank them in the following order:

Out of the Past
The Set-Up
Gun Crazy
Asphalt Jungle
Murder My Sweet

I thought the Set-Up was great but Out of the Past edges it out for me.

skuhn8 · #62 Post by **skuhn8** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:41 pm

porquenegar wrote:All the films were new to me except Asphalt Jungle. I personally rank them in the following order:

Out of the Past
The Set-Up
Gun Crazy
Asphalt Jungle
Murder My Sweet

I thought the Set-Up was great but Out of the Past edges it out for me.

Hah. Just watched Out of the Past last night. My first time. Definitely one of the finest noirs I've seen. Haven't watched Set-up or Gun crazy yet but would otherwise rank the other two the same.

devlinnn · #63 Post by **devlinnn** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:31 pm

Wise is a fine filmmaker. Individually, his films get high praise - but he himself doesn't, really. A bit like Andre de Toth.

As a company man, Wise would be held in the highest regard by the industry. Critics have longer memories. No matter what he has achieved, there will always be that little episode in the early 40s with Welles, the RKO Studio brass, days of reshoots, alot of trimming, and the butchering. He's not to blame, just a man doing his job, being told what to do. The company man through and through.

Billy Liar · #64 Post by **Billy Liar** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:58 pm

flixyflox wrote:THE SET UP is certainlly Wise's best movie and Ryan is wonderful.

Born To Kill gives it a run for it's money. It's one goddamn depraved Noir. Lawrence Tierney is one evil bastard.

How poor was the commentary from Scorsese though, If he'd have said 35mm one more time I would have exploded.

ben d banana · #65 Post by **ben d banana** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 1:30 am

Anyone else having problems w/ their Born To Kill disc? I've tried two players, it won't load properly and starts sticking close to the hour mark.

Derek Estes · #66 Post by **Derek Estes** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:07 am

No, my Born To Kill works fine but I've had problems with my Crossfire DVD, it seems to have problems loading. It takes about 10 min to load and it skips the WB logo and skips straight to the main menu, and it will not play the feature. Has anyone else experienced this? It is a new DVD player and has never given me problems, even with scratched discs.

BWilson · #67 Post by **BWilson** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 9:00 pm

Just to make thing interesting I have no problem with my Born to Kill, but my Narrow Margin pixelates like crazy for the last 10 minutes of the film. I haven't watched Crossfire yet.

jorencain · #68 Post by **jorencain** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:56 pm

I just watched "Crossfire" and I'm falling more and more in love with these Warner Noir sets. It's a shame that there's a major spoiler on the back of the case in the film description...the motive is given, which tells us who the killer is as soon as we hear "Jew boy".

Anyway, I had never seen Robert Ryan before watching "The Set-Up", and I really enjoy his performances in the three films that he appears in between the two box sets. He comes across very well in roles as both the good guy ("The Set-Up") and the bad guy ("Clash By Night" and "Crossfire"). His nervousness is palpable when he's being questioned at the end of "Crossfire", and he's very convincing as the picture of his character changes over the course of the film.

I also enjoyed the use of music in "Crossfire". I only noticed this at the end, but almost all of the music is coming from action within the film, and there's very little scoring for the film. Most of the other noir films I've seen rely heavily on A LOT of music. I loved that the music in the movie theater where Mitchell was waiting came from the screen, but was relevant to what was happening in the audience, between he and his wife.

Just some observations. If anyone is not sure whether or not they should invest in either of these sets, don't hesitate to pick them up.

porquenegar · #69 Post by **porquenegar** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 8:38 pm

sigh, just lost my whole post before submitting. Short version

I like Box #1 much better than this one. Dillinger seems out of place, it doesn't seem very noirish to me. My personal ranking

Clash by Night
The Narrow Margin
Crossfire
Dillinger
Born to Kill

I really liked all the little touches in Clash by Night like when Ryan's character hands a cigarette to Stanwyck, she looks at it distastefully and tosses it away without a word to light her own. The films just had more attitude than the others. Paul Douglas' character was perfect. I thought his range was very good in this, from sweet to murderous. I really like the ending too where he decides that if their relationship is going to work, he must trust her and lets her walk away with the baby.

The Narrrow Margin, I like mostly because of the pace. It flowed so well. There were some funny parts in it too like the grocer and tailor line from the train detective.

Crossfire was good but too preachy for my taste. Robert Young was very good in this. This movie also verifies my love for Gloria Grahame. What a hottie.

Dillenger was ok, but would have been better suited to another gangster set.

I didn't like Born to Kill mainly because I didn't like the leads.

cafeman · #70 Post by **cafeman** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:29 am

I have to echo some other comments here. I just went through the entire box, and it`s poorer than the last across the board.

Firstly, Clash by Night and Dillinger are decent films, and I like them to an extent, but they are most certainly not noir. Both have strong elements of noir, but never quite get there. The Narrow Margin is also another movie which I don`t really consider a noir, but I can let that one pass as such.

The two true noirs in the box, Born to Kill and Crossfire are splendid and essential. Crossfire in particular is a favorite in this set, and the only movie here that I`d consider a masterpiece. Yes, there is a lengthy 'message' scene near the end, but the time when it was made also has to be taken into account.

[flixyflow, I too found quite a bit of a homosexual undertone in the movie. Personally, I don`t buy that Samuels was altruistic in his approaching the young soldier. He picked the youngest and prettiest soldier of the bunch, chatted him up, and then invited him to his room and got him drunk. I`m even of the opinion that I may not be reaching if I were to say that Ryan commits the murder a little bit out of rejection, and that his racism is only an excuse. There`s quite a strong reaction from him when he finds that Samuels is no longer sitting by him, but talking to the other guy.]

Secondly, the commentarries in this box are vastly inferior to the last box. Milius appears to have been chosen to comment Dillinger solely because he remade it, and makes it quite clear that he basically finds this movie nearly a piece of shit. He seems overjoyed whan a moment he likes appears, and even then, his comment is like "i like that, isn`t that great how he just shows the hand coming down...good stuff" and never elaborates on anything. Friedkin spends half the Narrow Margin commentary telling us how this is essential noir, the best noir ever, and how the lead actors are best actors in noir, and how Marie Windsor is by far the most beautiful woman in noir ever and so on and so forth. So, these two commentaries are a complete miss.

Clash by Night has Bogdanovich, which is a failing in itself, though this one is one of his more tolerable commentaries. To his credit, he does claim that Clash by Night is not a noir many times throughout.

Born to Kill and Crossife have decent commentaries, and I even liked Muller on Born to Kill, moslt because of his willingness to admit that some moments in it may not be of the highest quality. It`s respectful, informative and insigtful, if not consistantly so. Same goes for Silver and Ursini on Crossfire.

Bottom line, I`m glad to have the set, but I expected more.

BWilson · #71 Post by **BWilson** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 1:27 pm

I agree. I like the set and I like the films, but they aren't noir. Or at least not noir enough.

Clash By Night is excellent, but it really belongs to the post-classical, "existential termoil melodrama of the post-War male" genre popularized by east coast playwrites like William Inge. In fact I'd say Clash By Night is one of the finnest specimens of such films. Others, like Picnic, have not aged well and have become downright laughable.

I know that noir wears many hats, but I would have preferred a "Noir Box" to contain more detectives, dames, and fatalistic love affairs.

cafeman · #72 Post by **cafeman** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 1:43 pm

BWilson wrote:I agree. I like the set and I like the films, but they aren't noir. Or at least not noir enough.

Clash By Night is excellent, but it really belongs to the post-classical, "existential termoil melodrama of the post-War male" genre popularized by east coast playwrites like William Inge. In fact I'd say Clash By Night is one of the finnest specimens of such films. Others, like Picnic, have not aged well and have become downright laughable.

I agree, even though I did feel the ending was a bit of a copout, especially after I realised that the play ended differently.

BWilson wrote:I know that noir wears many hats, but I would have preferred a "Noir Box" to contain more detectives, dames, and fatalistic love affairs.

Couldn`t agree more.

GringoTex · #73 Post by **GringoTex** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 2:43 pm

alandau wrote: There is no doubt that Crossfire is a stagey overrated film, no matter what they substituted for the taboo homosexual aspect of the novel. I will always find it stagey and definitely not a prototypical noir.

I just finished watching this for the first time and found nothing "stagey" about it. Maybe some specific examples would help your point.

porquenegar · #74 Post by **porquenegar** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 6:23 pm

Coincidently, I just listened to Bogdonovitch's commentary track on Clash By Night and thought it was decent. He usually annoys the crap out of me.

I really liked the comments he made regarding how the camera was used during the long takes and how you can tell which directors worked during the silent era or at least studied the films of that era by how they tell the story visually moreso than relying on dialogue. He mentions a director, whose name escapes me, that after principally completing editing, would run the movie without sound and if he could follow what was going one felt that he made a competent movie.

He's still too smug but I was interested in the stories he told about the actors.

GringoTex · #75 Post by **GringoTex** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 7:13 pm

flixyflox wrote:Does this just go to show that only gay people are able to "read" gay texts and subtexts? Surely not!

Knowing nothing about the original source material before watching it, I picked upon the gay subtext easily. And I'm straight with bad gaydar.